


Darkness Falls

by thedevilchicken



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:12:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Apologies to Apricity for the Snow/Huntsman elements of this story; she did specify that did didn't want a fic driven by Snow White or Ravenna having romantic feelings for the Huntsman. I'm not sure that that's the driving force here; I'd like to think it's more about Snow than him!</p></blockquote>





	Darkness Falls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apricity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricity/gifts).



Snow thinks that she's in love. 

These days, they're rebuilding the parts of the castle that Ravenna and her army razed to ruins. It's tedious work, it's slow and Snow insists on helping though she supposes that it's not exactly a queen's place to do it. So many faces have appeared all around to tell her how a queen really ought to behave, that this thing or that thing or a subtle mixture of the two doesn't befit a woman of her standing. She occasionally thinks that she recalls a face, an expression, a hint of a person she knew before Ravenna stole her father, a nursemaid, an advisor. But the moment fades and she's left there in a chilly stone room with a table strewn with plans and an architect with a long grey beard that almost tucks into his belt telling her that really they ought not to tear down the tower where they held her all those years. 

She wants that place gone, though. As long as it's there she'll keep on going back to it, she'll close the door of her cell behind her and it's almost like she never left at all. She wants to pull that place apart, will do it herself, will chip out the mortar and throw aside the blocks one by one if she has to. Her hands are already callused from the works outside and from the time she's spending with the sword. She'll have no prisoners locked up in the tower, at least not while she feels she's still just two steps away from there herself. 

And then, at night, she goes to sleep in Ravenna's bed. 

It's not the bed where her father died. She remembers that bed, canopies and cushions and her father dying there when she was still too small to stop it. Ravenna removed the bed and brought another in its place; Snow sometimes wonders where she put it, if she had it tucked away in a cellar where the moths and rats and damp would start to eat it or if she burned it, hacked it up, sold it maybe. She supposes that it doesn't matter. 

She undresses at the end of the day and she waves away the ladies who wait to fuss over her, clean her, frown at her because queens should never let themselves get so very dirty. She has no head for figures and the architect makes her head hurt with his calculations. William and his men are happy to go over the plans for her while she works outside. She thinks it's better that way, that the people see she's out there with them, that she hasn't returned to bring another Ravenna, that she doesn't bathe in milk while the people are starving, doesn't wile away the hours staring at her face in the mirror. She's not too bad with a trowel these days and doesn't mind when she goes inside with mortar drying in her hair or the knees of her leather breeches, mud caked under her fingernails. She spends the days working hard and eats with the men and women of the city. They laugh together over the bread and wine and mutton stew. She feels like she belongs. 

There are plenty of others to tell her it's not right, that there's a long table in the castle and a throne where she should sit. William tries to tell her sometimes, when he forgets that he can't change her mind. She thinks perhaps she grew stubborn in her cell while she should have been educated as William was. She can read and write well enough but sometimes she can't help but think her ideas are just a little girl's. She's grown up too fast and not at all. 

She bathes in Ravenna's baths, in warm water heated gently over coals. It's an extravagance she doesn't really need but she allows herself that because she loves the way it feels, warm water on her skin, washing away the dirt like it can wash away the years and leave her happy like she was as a girl. She could almost swim in there, but she starts to feel like a fish in a tank after a while, like the walls have eyes and she's some kind of pretty bauble or a prize for men to leer at. She covers herself quickly as she leaves the water, dries herself, shivering, and pulls on her nightdress. She leaves the room, all the warmth drained from her by the cold stone floor. And she slips into Ravenna's bed. 

It was made for the queen before Snow White. The frame is wrought iron and cold, hard steel, full of twists and jags almost sharp enough to cut if she's not careful how she slips between the sheets. All the other beds she's known were wood, but this thing suits Ravenna, she thinks. She stretches out, the heavy sheets still cold around her. She lets her fingers curl around the bars as the last candle fades and gutters, leaving her entirely in the dark. She spent too long in the dark to be scared of it. In Ravenna's bed, all the darkness makes her feel is small. 

As she drifts further toward sleep, she thinks that maybe she's in love. 

She sees the Huntsman every day, even if they don't always speak. She sees him over a table as they eat, across the hall, at the back of the church. She sees him in the yards, heaving blocks of stone or splitting timbers as they rebuild and rebuild, walls and houses and everything Ravenna's reign destroyed or at least let fall to disrepair. Snow wants her city to be just the way that she remembers, in the back of her mind before her father died. 

She sees the Huntsman in glances. He's teaching boys how to use a bow to bring down a deer, how to swing an axe, how to split a log or a man's head and she's not entirely sure which. She'll see him across the yard, where she's practicing the sword with her new master-at-arms. William's there too, sometimes, and the way he looks at her makes her wonder if she wants to know what's in his head. 

She thinks she's in love because of the flutter in her stomach as she sees him nock an arrow or give his bread to the blacksmith's boys at dinner. She tries not to look at him, to keep her eyes on her food or the master-at-arms in his mail and surcoat as he's trying to teach her. She's a fast study but sometimes she's distracted. She recalls what it's like to be close to him, the smell under the ale and the blood and the mud they'd tracked over half the kingdom. She remembers the warmth of his hands on her goosepimpled skin and as she lays there so very close to sleep she wonders what it would be like to feel that again, to feel it here, to feel it now. 

But when she dreams, he's not the one she dreams of. 

The hands on her are cold; they might as well be ice. Snow's eyes stay shut but she doesn't need to see to know that touch or the honey-sweet smell of Ravenna's long gold hair as she reclines beside her there beneath the sheets. She can feel her cold eyes on her, sharp, like they can see her even in the total darkness and perhaps they can. Ravenna's a witch, or was, and who's to say what unnatural powers she has, or had?

Snow can feel the tip of the ring-blade it's drawn oh so slowly over her rough linen nightdress. It's barely a whisper against the fabric but it cuts without a pause or hitch. The point makes her tingle but it doesn't break the skin. Ravenna never wanted her to bleed; she just wanted her heart on a plate, that's all. Blood would be unnecessary before the act and so she's rid of her nightdress without so much as a second's discomfort. That's not to say that she's comfortable, of course. That's not to say that she likes this, that she wouldn't reach for the dagger she keeps under the pillows if she could make herself move even just one inch. She can't. It's like there's been a spell on her. 

Ravenna's voice is barely a whisper, a murmur, words that Snow doesn't understand but recognises because she's heard all of this before. Then she feels one icy hand on her, tracing the bone of one hip, gliding across the plane of her stomach. Her breath hitches as it always does. Ravenna's skin is so cold, or maybe it's the silver rings at her fingers, maybe it's both, but Snow's skin feels so hot at that touch. Her cheeks are burning but she's not sure if that's shame or something else. This woman killed her father and there's nothing she can do to stop this. The sorceress could kill her now and she wouldn't be able to lift a finger in her own defence. She has no idea how she killed her. 

That sibilant voice by hear ear makes her shiver just as much as her touch. Fingertips glide over her stomach as cold breath tickles her ear; Ravenna's thumb brushes one nipple and Snow realises all over again just how painfully taut they are, how the sheets resting against them were tantamount to torture. She almost whimpers as Ravenna plucks there with her fingertips, a hint of cold silver beside skin. She squeezes her eyes shut hard though she'd never actually thought to open them. She should make her stop, she thinks, but she can't. But she knows she hasn't even tried; perhaps it's not so much a case of can't as won't. 

"Snow."

Her name in Ravenna's voice sounds dark and makes her bite down on her lip, or maybe that's just the way that fingertips trailing over her thighs makes her feel. 

"Snow."

It's like a curse the way she says it, or a curse-word, like it's something dirty, beneath her notice, beneath her dignity. Ravenna's cold hands ease apart Snow's thighs. She uses the tip of the talon of one silver ring to trace the soft, warm lips between those thighs. 

Snow shivers; Ravenna tuts. "Stay still, Snow White," she whispers, her voice barely there are all, like the name is hard for her to say, but Snow stays still. Ravenna plucks off one ring and the tip of her icy finger searches softly between Snow's thighs. The pad touches the soft little button between her lips and rubs in little circles. Snow bites down harder on her lip. Before the dreams she'd never known about that place; these days every time she sees the Huntsman it seems to throb and make her blush. 

She walked in on a knight in the stables with a milkmaid one rainy afternoon after the battle, saw more than she'd wanted to and now she wonders about that sometimes. She wonders if she'd like to do with the Huntsman what she saw those two doing, wonders what he'd feel like inside her. When Ravenna's icy fingers press between her thighs, part her folds and push inside her slowly, she knows he couldn't feel like this. He'd be warm and she'd be nervous and everything would be ended before it began. Ravenna takes her time, one hand at Snow's throat and one between her thighs, the slow thrust of her fingers making Snow pull tight around them. Her hips tilt to bring Ravenna's thumb to the throbbing little button. Her breath comes sharp and unsteady. She thinks maybe she's losing her mind. 

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall…"

Snow wishes she could close her ears the way she's closed her eyes. She wishes she could stop but doesn't. Her skin is too hot. Her breath is too short. Her hips shift endlessly, bringing Ravenna's fingers deeper again and again; they've never warmed up. 

She gasps and grasps Ravenna's wrist as something bursts inside her. 

"Who's the fairest of them all?"

She opens her eyes; she sees herself in the mirror, flushed and naked, both hands between her thighs. Ravenna, of course, was never there. Snow White will go back to sleep.

In the morning, she'll wash and she'll dress and she'll go back out to work. She'll pick up a sword around noon and she'll practice until her arms feel so heavy she can hardly lift them. She thinks perhaps she'd be better with a bow and perhaps the Huntsman could teach her as he teaches the stable boys sometimes. He'd rest one hand at her waist while she draws. He'd be too close; his touch would distract her. 

But in the night, she knows she'll never ask him. 

Ravenna was a queen unlike any other and in the end Snow was the one who beat her. But that wasn't the end, it was just the beginning, and Snow White the Queen needs Ravenna now more than she'd thought she could when she'd wished her dead and made it true. 

Snow thinks she's in love but in the end love doesn't matter. She needs more strength than that. 

For all she wants to be just one of them, the baker's girl, the Huntsman's wife, Snow will put aside her childish dreams and be the woman that she has to be. She'll bring them out of darkness. She'll take a little of Ravenna's steel and sacrifice what purity she has to wield it. 

She did it once and freed the kingdom. She'll do it now and bring the kingdom back to life.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to Apricity for the Snow/Huntsman elements of this story; she did specify that did didn't want a fic driven by Snow White or Ravenna having romantic feelings for the Huntsman. I'm not sure that that's the driving force here; I'd like to think it's more about Snow than him!


End file.
